FreeBSD I LOVE YOU

[Matthew Seaman]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 03:51:01PM +0100, Anthony Atkielski wrote:
> Colin J. Raven writes:
> 
> CJR> Eh? Surely you don't meant trashed - physically annihilated?
> 
> Absolutely.  That's the only safe way to protect data.  Any disk drive
> with platters that are even remotely intact can still be read.
> 
> I have yet to throw away any disk drives for this reason (can't find a
> convenient place to have them destroyed).

Most disks nowadays use a metallic surface as the magnetic medium.  If
you're really paranoid about destroying the data on the drive, then
heating it up beyond it's Curie temperature should do the trick.  For
iron the Curie temperature is 1043K (or 770 degC) -- other
ferromagnetic metals should be in the same ball park.  Thus heating
the disk platters until they glow red-hot (about 800 degC) should be
enough to wipe any magnetic data on them.  You can achieve that sort
of temperature readily enough using a good bed of charcoal and a
bellows, or you might be able to use a butane powered blow-torch.

But on the whole, unless you're dealing with people's confidential
medical information or with state secrets why got to that degree of
expense?  Just overwrite the data with a series of different patterns
of 1s and 0s, which will be sufficient to render the data
unrecoverable for all practical purposes and send the drives for
scrap.  If you're really paranoid, you might render the drives
definitively unsable by drilling a hole through them as well as
overwriting.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       8 Dane Court Manor
                                                      School Rd
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Tilmanstone
Tel: +44 1304 617253                                  Kent, CT14 0JL UK
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